The Books' Whisper

In the '90s, Alessandro Correnti was "Deus", one of the most famous and respected hackers in the world, now he's a "nerd" lawyer working in Milan, he's single, and lives a quiet life. He starts working on a pedo-pornography case involving a famous architect and at the same time a female friend contacts him to ask for his technical help regarding a case on illegal dog smuggling from Eastern Europe to Italy that seems to be handled by the organised crime. Meanwhile, "God", Deus’s old mentor, contacts him to let him know that he’s going to run a conference in Milan the day after and that he’s going to reveal very important things. The conference begins, but just before being able to reveal the important news, God has a heart attack and dies. Alessandro suspects that somebody induced his death using a computer to cover for something, and decides to investigate.

This is a great e-legal thriller, a page-turner, extremely fascinating and interesting, and it could be turned into an excellent film. The importance of defending the freedom of thought and speech and people's privacy is the main issue and message of the book. The Web is the real democratic platform, and this should be defended. Like for the “true” hackers, the most important thing is that information is available to everybody. This aspect is extremely interesting, and actually all the e-methods we read in the book are real, as Ziccardi got them from scientific articles or experiments he did with some friends. This books has a lot of Orwell’s 1984, with the exception that now lots of these things are really happening (or already happened).

The style is charming, fascinating, and extremely timely, plus it's effective, immediate, and accessible to everyone, even when Ziccardi goes into technical details. Not only is a good read, but it also makes you think and reconsider how we (mis)use our technologies.

The author is a professor of legal IT and he’s himself a “hacker”, so everything is quite reliable.